> coming-of-age novel"
Technically it is correct, but in doing that you lose the essence of the word “roman” and of the whole influence French culture had over the whole of Europe until not that long ago, including in Germany. It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.
I don’t think the argument that English's book comes from novel as in new and in French book comes ‘of the roman vernacular’ and that this changes the meaning in some profound way. I don’t speak German, but it sounds like it the meaning has been fully lost and now it just means of the French. (unless you know all three languages and then I guess it has more meaning) At most, it is vaguely interesting to think of the etymology when hanging on a word, I guess more so if you know multiple languages
Your objection to translating "Roman" as "novel" seems to be that Roman is closer to the French word for novel than "novel" in English is? But this seems to be more an objection to English using the word "novel" instead of something closer to the modern French term, and not actually an objection related to the translation.
This seems like a slightly strange objection to me; I would have thought the actual semantic problem lies with "Bildung", in that a Bildungsroman generally involves some kind of learning/development/improvement, whereas a coming-of-age novel does not necessarily involve this.
> It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.
I mean this is a very weird claim, which assumes that Europe is culturally homogenous (e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia).
> I mean this is a very weird claim, which assumes that Europe is culturally homogenous (e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia).
Yeah I don't get this either. The English culture and language both have clear influences from French, courtesy of the Norman invasion (and other influence points over time of course). It's weird to point to Britain of all places as not being influenced by French culture.
> e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia
Not sure about Slovenia but there's a lot more France here in Romania (from where I'm from) compared to the France that is present in Britain, that is if we ignore the 1200-1300s Norman direct influences. But that's a different discussion, related to how the insular Brits cannot really comprehend Napoleon's work to the fullest (as a reminder, what is now Slovenia was indeed, if even for a short period of time, under Napoleonic France, with Ljubljana being indeed the capital of what was then a French autonomous province [1])
Slovenia's also been occupied by the Romans, Bavaria, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Fascist Italy, and was part of Yugoslavia. I think any French influence is probably a bit diluted.
> Technically it is correct, but in doing that you lose the essence of the word “roman”
This isn't specific to concepts like "Bildungsroman." You're essentially saying "this word isn't just a word, but a word with implicit cultural context."
That's true of pretty much every word. Hell, translating "ao" from Japanese, you'd think is so simple: blue. Except it can also mean green because in Japanese there is less historical, cultural distinction between blue and green. So obviously green traffic lights are called "blue" in Japanese, not green.
You'll never get a perfect translation of anything that's longer than a couple words. The point of translation is getting close enough. Translating Bildungsroman as "coming of age novel" gets you so close, that if your conversation hinges on the actual nuance, you're almost assuredly talking to someone who will understand what Bildungsroman means, so you just use that word.
EDIT: One of my friends at uni did his thesis on the difference between Japanese "natsukashii" and English "nostalgic." I've always thought about that as the perfect example of how any simple translation is fraught with cultural complications. There are certainly things I would call "nostalgic" but I'd never call "natsukashii," because nostalgia can come with sadness, but natsukashii never does.
All words have history through etymology. Only a few dozen people actually care about it though.